Nobody's Hero. Frank Laumer
heard something. He opened his eyes. The fog was back, thick and bright. Morning. The sound was almost on top of him, a persistent mooing sort of sound. He had heard that sound before. The Sangumon, the steamboat that had brought his company the last leg of their march to Fort Morgan. The whistle. A steamboat whistle! He tried to move, to shout. Suddenly the boat was visible, side like the wall of a barn. Men were shouting, calling to him from the huge ship. They had seen him, he was saved.
The steamboat Watchman, out of New Orleans bound for Mobile, had got out of the channel on account of the fog, crewmen had seen Clark in the moments of passing the overturned skiff. He was hauled aboard, wrapped in blankets, given hot rum. They took him on to Mobile, put him in the hospital. In a clean bed, warm, well fed, he recovered in three weeks, could return to duty. A reporter from the Georgia Enquirer came to him before he returned to Fort Morgan, asked how he survived when all the others were lost. Clark stared at the man, remembering the shock, the cold, the fear. Why had he held? Lucy had said, “This is our time, Mr. Clark. We must live.” He told the reporter only, “Lucy.” The man stared, shook his head, turned away.
4
A fellow officer had described Captain Belton as “one of the most intelligent and accomplished officers of the United States Army.” Yet a decade ago he had been court-martialed and suspended, prompting another officer, Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott, to write him: “How has it happened that you have so many enemies? I will not believe there is anything wrong in your heart, but have been driven to the conviction that there is much which requires improvement in your temper. It would be idle to say that you could, otherwise, have made so many of your associates your personal enemies. Your case calls for all your fortitude. Show yourself a man.”
Belton, along with his men, had been in virtual exile at Fort Morgan since October 1835 when Fraser and his company had been transferred to Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay. As the long, listless, empty days passed, Clark had often seen the captain sitting outdoors with his easel, placidly sketching the fort and vicinity, adding color with pencils and paint. Having discovered that Clark could read and even write, Belton had assigned him the sometime job of clerk, sending for him whenever a ship called. Aside from letters to Harriet, his wife, he liked to have Clark read his military correspondence aloud to him, the better to make reply. In August he had received a letter from Col. James M. Fannin Jr. in Texas, whom he had met briefly the previous winter in Mobile. Fannin had proposed that Belton join him in the service of Texan independence, offered him the command of “as brave a set of backwoodsmen as ever were led to battle.” Clark knew from the papers that Fannin, along with William Barret Travis, James Bowie, and David Crockett, planned to join the Mexican province of Texas in a bid for secession. Belton had hesitated, replying to Fannin in September that “it would be a step of great importance to me to discard as nothing domestic duties and military responsibilities.” He had agreed only to visit New Orleans, act as inspector of cannon, arms, and other military stores gathering for the coming struggle with Gen. Martin Perfecto do Cos, brother-in-law of the Mexican president, Santa Anna. De Cos had established his headquarters in an abandoned mission east of San Antonio called the Alamo.
While Clark had sat, pen in hand, Belton paced, talked to himself. To join Fannin would be a gamble of all against nothing. He would have to resign his commission after twenty-three years of slow progress rank by rank, years spent trying to overcome the stain of court-martial, suspension, all gone for the hope of rank and glory under a foreign flag. And what of his only child, Winfield Scott Belton, sixteen, whom he was preparing for West Point? Fort Morgan was as secure but as lonely a spot as military service offered and the idea of adventure and advancement had a lot of appeal—from a distance. He was finally spared the agony of decision when, on the twenty-second of November, 1835, he received orders to take his company to Florida.
Clark boarded ship with his company on the 30th, glad to be in motion, glad to leave their lonely brick fortress. Headwinds and stormy weather slowed the long crossing of the Gulf, not reaching Tampa Bay until the 11th of December. Men crowded the rail as they made the last thirty miles north and east up the bay. Fort Brooke finally in sight, Clark could see the partially palisaded area set back only a little from the water’s edge, docks thrusting out like fingers from a wooden fist. Among the log buildings were giant live oaks laced with yellow jasmine, like a woman with flowers in her hair. The area looked more like the grounds of the courthouse in Geneseo than the encampment ground of an army. Immediately beyond were the blackened skeletons of perhaps a hundred orange trees, probably killed in last winter’s hard freeze. The only defenses looked to be blockhouses at two of the angles of a parallelogram, the line of men’s quarters and other structures between making the exterior defense.
Long boats brought them to the wharf, a handful of sailors pulling at the sweeps. Non-coms got the men sorted out, formed into ranks. Belton indicated that Clark was to accompany him. It made no difference to Clark. As orderly he had lighter duty and a better knowledge of events than others.
Captain Fraser was in command. With Capt. George Gardiner and a dozen others, he greeted Belton and his junior officers. Clark hovered attentively. Introductions were made, acquaintances renewed. At the first pause Fraser led the little group down the dock and headed up the rise toward the fort. He explained that he and the others were huddled within the encampment, their backs to Tampa Bay—three undermanned companies, 119 men in all, many with wives and children. “I am responsible as well for a hundred civilians sheltered within the fort,” Fraser explained. “Sick reports are high from fevers and inflammatory diseases. Since the first of the month, the excited state of the Seminoles in the neighborhood, the plunder and burning of property all around the bay, the expectation of attack, have galvanized the entire garrison, soldier and civilian, to extraordinary effort to place the position in a state of defense.” He waved an arm. “As you see, we’ve begun to palisade the area with pine logs planted shoulder to shoulder around the encampment, block houses built at opposite corners. We’ll soon be secure” he added confidently.
A junior officer spoke up: “As a measure of their respect, the men refer to one as the ‘Fraser Redoubt.’ ”
Fraser smiled, motioned deprecatingly. “I’ve had ditches, three feet wide and eight feet deep, dug around the fort to slow an attack, sharpened stakes set in the bottom and covered with straw. And some thirty civilians have organized themselves as mounted rangers. They patrol the approaches to the fort during the early morning hours.”
He glanced at Belton, over his shoulder at the others, back to Belton. He paused, said quietly, heavily, “Still, in the dead of night the alarm drum frequently sounds.” A friendly murmur of talk ended. “Under the circumstances, Captain, I suggest we go directly to my office, let Gardiner and I brief you on our circumstances.” In a moment of silence, he noticed Belton silently looking around at the hasty defensive improvisations on the grounds surrounding the fort. Accepting Belton’s silence as agreement, he led the group on toward the fort.
“You must understand,” Fraser continued, “the real problem is that defense was not a circumstance anticipated when ‘Cantonment’ Brooke was established eleven years ago. It was built more as a symbol of American authority than as a military fort. Ten years ago there were rumors of a possible attack and the camp was hastily stockaded, but a month later the rumors had passed, the pickets pulled up and stacked. Since then attack has never been anything more than a rumor. Seminoles have been looked upon more as a nuisance than a threat.”
Fraser knew Belton was from Maryland, neither stranger nor foe to slavery, yet his own explanation of their problem seemed to beg the question: Why now? “The abomination of slavery has changed all that.” He stopped, looked at Belton, saw the tightening of his lips. He looked at Gardiner. Gardiner nodded. The other officers eddied about, silent, listening. “When we bought Florida from Spain in 1821, the Territory was no longer a safe haven for escaped slaves, a trapdoor in the bottom of the nation through which they could drop out of Alabama and Georgia and land in freedom. The slave catchers were turned loose. To the whites who own them, of course, slaves are a capital investment; to the Seminoles they are men and women. Among the Seminoles they were scattered, absorbed, difficult for the slave catchers to find. The larger the Seminole land, the more difficult the search.”
He spread his